1 Peter 3:18-4:6

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

¹⁸ For Christ also suffered^[a] for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you^[b] to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,^{(A) 19} in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, ²⁰ who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight lives, were saved through water.^{(B) 21} And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for^[c] a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,^{(C) 22} who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.^(D)

Good Stewards of God’s Grace

4 Since, therefore, Christ suffered in the flesh,^[d] arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin),^{(E) 2} so as to live for the rest of your time in the flesh no longer by human desires but by the will of God.^{(F) 3} You have already spent enough time in doing what the gentiles like to do, living in debauchery, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry.^{(G) 4} They are surprised that you no longer join them in the same excesses of dissipation, and so they blaspheme.^{[e](H) 5} But they will have to give an accounting to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead.^{(I) 6} For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.